Successive federal government reforms to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) appear to be working and should double the amount of revenue predicted.

It is not often the Government is told part of its health system is working well but that is the diagnosis delivered to Medicines Australia by the Centre for Strategic Economic Studies at Victoria University.

The centre's director, Peter Sheehan, says the PBS is a very important scheme.

"It enables [people] to get good drugs at affordable prices and the reforms that have been put in place have made that now reasonably stable going ahead in cost terms," he said.

Professor Sheehan says successive reforms have worked, particularly the savings on drugs coming off patent. The study predicts the Government is likely to double its forecast savings.

"The Government predicted about $3 billion of savings ... out of this over the 10 years to 2017," he said.

"We think that will be about twice as much - about $6 billion."

He believes the warning from Treasury, indicating the system was in crisis because of an ageing population and increasing costs, will not happen and indeed probably was never likely.

"I think the original Treasury inter-generational report didn't show much understanding of the pharmaceutical market," he said.

"These drugs going out of patent, this was always going to take place. It was predictable and with the proper policies in place, the PBS and hence the Government could always garner those savings.

"I think the Government has a lot of other problems in health and elsewhere. I don't think this is one they are going to have to worry about for a while."